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Afe Babalola University Teaching Hospital, Ado Ekiti(ABUTH), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) with one of the most prominent medical institutions, the Aster Group of Hospitals in Dubai, United Arab Emirates as part of efforts to end spending of billions of naira by Nigerians seeking medical treatments abroad.

The partnership, according to ABUAD’s founder, Chief Afe Babalola(SAN) , will make the Afe Babalola Teaching Hospital and the Dubai based medical institution to partner in the areas of clinical, technical and administration to lend support for the new Teaching Hospital. The memorandum was signed in the hospital on Tuesday, where it was agreed that Aster will offer short and long terms as well as permanent partnership for smooth take off of ABUATH .

Speaking after the memorandum was signed, Dr. Navin Pascal , who spoke on behalf of the Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of Aster, said the
hospitals has subsidiaries in nine countries and had been receiving over patients from over 90 countries across the world.He said it was sad that Nigeria loses over 35,000 doctors to advanced countries due to poor remunerations, saying the trend has been affecting healthcare service in the country.

“Aster has become a referral centre in the middle East. Our partnership with ABUAD will be in the areas of training, technical and
administration.“What we will do is to train the doctors here so that ABUAD can be self sufficient in having experts that can perform critical operations that can make the rich and middle class Nigerians to see the hospitals
as a better alternative.

“We appreciate the fact that ABUAD is working hard for humanity and Aster partnering with it will bring a paradigm shift in Nigeria’s
health sector”, he said.Babalola revealed that a delegation will leave for Dubai in January 26 to perfect the MoU agreement .

“In this partnership, ABUTH and Aster are equal partners. Though, we agreed for long and short terms, but the memorandum may be forever
depending on its workability.

“Nigerians can’t afford to be spending so much on medical tourism and I have faith that this partnership will make the country to be a leading nation in healthcare services”.He said the breaking down of medical equipment in critical areas like dialysis , oncology and cardiology was becoming embarrassing, urging Aster to bring in experts in biomedical engineering to train the experts in ABUATH to prevent such from occurring in the hospital.